Sultan M Hali
India has hiked its military budget by unprecedented proportions in its 2008-09 defense allocation. Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram boosted expenditure for the fiscal year ending March 2009 from the previous allocation of $24 billion by 10 percent to $26.4 billion, saying security was of paramount importance. In the steepest hike since partition of the subcontinent, India plans to spend at least $30 billion until 2012 to fund a mammoth modernization programme to upgrade its armed forces with an immediate purchase of 126 war jets costing $12 billion followed by ships, submarines, artillery and other hardware in coming years. The 1.23-million-strong Indian army, the world’s fourth largest, has been allocated $9 billion to help modernize mechanized divisions, artillery and air defense units. The Indian Finance Minister has committed $1.85 billion to its navy which is shopping for six submarines in addition to the six it bought last year from Armaris and European defense firm MBDA for $3 billion. The 137-ship Indian Navy (IN) is also in advanced negotiations to buy eight long-range reconnaissance aircraft besides building a nuclear-powered submarine. Chidambaram allotted $2.71 billion for the Indian Air Force (IAF). The remaining funds have been earmarked for research development and ordnance factories which are in the process of deploying India’s guided and ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.
The extraordinary increase in its defense spending has caused ripples in the region, especially by its neighbours who will bear the brunt of India’s ambitious defense spending. The vulgar defense spending by India has been taken cognizance of its own saner elements in the intelligentsia. Praful Bidwai, in his Op-Ed titled: ‘Military overdrive’, says, “When the last Union Budget was presented, many newspapers reported – some with a hint of pride – that India’s defense spending would breach the Rs.100,000-crore barrier for the first time. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, not one general-interest paper commented critically on the widely publicized Rs.105, 600-crore defense services allocation. Nor have the media asked precisely what constitutes defense expenditure in official reckoning or questioned our perverse priorities, with a paltry rise in long-neglected health and education allocations, coupled with generous (10 to 27 per cent) increases in the military budget year after year.
However, the grim truth about our fast-rising military expenditure should make us all sit up, interrogate the government and demand corrective action, including deep cuts in allocations, rationalization of arms procurement and operational procedures, and other economy measures. A radical change in our spending priorities is imperative if we are to halt India’s growing militarization, promote a modicum of human development and social cohesion, and stop inviting social turmoil, unrest, chaos and insecurity. First, the claim that India only spends a modest 2 to 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on the military is plain wrong. The Rs.105, 600-crore figure only covers “defense services” (comprising the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the ordnance factories, the Defence Research & Development Organization, DRDO, and capital outlay, mainly for arms buying). This is calculated to hide the true magnitude of spending by illegitimately excluding what are officially called “defense (civil) estimates”, incurred exclusively to service the military. These include defense pensions, now budgeted at a hefty Rs.15,564 crore, and miscellaneous expenses, including Ministry of Defence establishment costs, the Coast Guard, canteen stores, housing, various public works, and so on (another Rs.2,371 crore). If these are added, the military budget even in the narrow sense swells to Rs.123, 535 crore ($30.9 billion) or 2.95 per cent of the GDP. This is no mean sum by any standards. In dollar terms, it is three times higher than what India spent on defense just 10 years ago. And it is more than one-half the military spending figure ($57.2 billion) China cites even after recently raising it by a huge 17.6 per cent. And China’s economy is almost three times larger than India’s.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute defines the term to include “all current and capital expenditure on: (a) the armed forces, including peacekeeping forces; (b) defense ministries and other government agencies engaged in defense projects; (c) paramilitary forces, when judged to be trained and equipped for military operations; and (d) military space activities”. This also includes operations and maintenance, military R&D and military aid but excludes civil defense and spending on previous military activities such as veterans’ benefits, demobilization and conversion.
If the Central paramilitary forces’ budget of Rs.21, 715 crore is added to the Rs.123, 535 crore, the military expenditure shoots up to over Rs.145, 000 crore. But this may be excessive. So let us only add another Rs.9, 000 crore or so, which comprises the budget for the Border Security Force, Assam Rifles, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and the Sashastra Seema Bal, and half the allocation to the Central Reserve Police Force, a good chunk of which is deployed in the border regions, including Kashmir. Logically, one must also add to this the budget for residential accommodation for the paramilitary forces (Rs.540 crore), for public works (Rs.580 crore), and for India-Bangladesh and India-Pakistan border fencing (Rs.700 crore). Over and above is the expenditure on nuclear biological and chemical defense, probably of the order of Rs.2, 000-3,000 crore a year. This total works out to about Rs.137, 000 crore, which is a sizeable 3.3 per cent of the GDP, by no means a modest figure. In addition, it is known that the government directly or indirectly subsidizes various public sector companies (such as Bharat Dynamics, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bharat Earth Movers Limited and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited) involved in defense production.
A society that spends such a huge proportion of its scarce resources on the military when it cannot even feed all its people or overcome the chronic malnutrition prevalent among half its children is very, very sick. Its pathology is all the more troubling on account of two factors. First, many of the new military capabilities – especially, sophisticated hardware – that India is acquiring have little to do with any notion of self-defense or “adequate defense”. They are about power projection through offensive stances and extending India’s strategic reach well beyond the neighbourhood. This is true of the new platforms India is acquiring, including submarines, troop-landing ships, aircraft carriers and other vessels relevant to a blue-waters navy, the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and long-range aircraft of different descriptions, not to speak of an array of missiles, including nuclear-tipped missiles, and India’s military-related space ambitions.
Next, there is rampant corruption in the armed services. The numerous recently reported scams are probably the tip of the iceberg. Bribes are apparently exchanged for all manner of things – purchase of everything from eggs to airplanes, under-supply of vitally necessary material. There is a method in the madness of Indian war-preparedness and it needs to be watched.
Email: sm_hali@yahoo.com
Courtesy Pakistan Observer